With rising distribution cost, Jesuit Refugee Service-Asia Pacific has decided to make their magazine, Diakonia, be available online only. If you would like to receive a copy of Diakonia electronically, please email diakonia@jrs.or.th. The last printed copy of the magazine can be downloaded using the link below.
Fr Jorge Anzorena (JPN) spoke at the ACHR Regional Meeting in Bangkok last January 27. Mr Denis Murphy introduced him, saying “This amazing person is Argentinian by birth, entered the Jesuit order and became a priest when he was in his early thirties. . . . If you ever hire someone, you should look for someone like Fr Jorge.” The transcript of Fr Jorge’s talk began as follows, “There are one billion slum dwellers in the world, and 600 million of them are in Asia. This is the situation that has moved many people to do something – activists, professionals, community leaders, architects, planners.
China’s karst landscape stretches through eight provinces in southern China – from Guangxi and Hubei in the east to Guizhou, Sichuan, Yunnan and parts of Tibet in the west. Unfortunately, this has also become the border of poverty, ecology, and opportunity in south-southwestern China. The karst belt is about 500,000 square kilometers with 8,200 million people living. In Yunnan Province, the karst landscape comprises nearly 44 percent of its total land area.
Xavier University has now established its baseline data for solid waste management program. Through the Physical Plant Office (PPO), a trial run was conducted for one week and also during the special event of Xavier Days in order to estimate the different volumes of wastes being produced. Now that some data has been gathered, the challenge is to reduce wastes of 9-18 cubic meter per week by 50% and reinforce waste segregation project in the University.
Projected Activities, 1st Quarter 2011
Fr Pedro Walpole SJ recently attended an international conference in Whakatane, New Zealand on “Sharing Power: A New Vision for Development,” which focused on the needed shift in development paradigm for a sustainable world. On 16 January, he shared with the … Continued
Sad, shocked eyes looked at us from the hospital bed. Earlier in the week Sam Ren had driven the “iron buffalo”, a type of village tractor which carries goods and people across the field to tend the chilli plants. The villagers had been planting this field for some years and used the path across the fields regularly. At night they set out to return home on the same route.
The first big eruption of Mount Merapi was on the 26 October. A lot of people living as close as 10 km to the volcano were evacuated to safer areas. Like many other students in Yogyakarta, the Jesuit scholastics were still going to school on the following days, viewing the volcano spewing ashes which made a 2 km column of cloud, as they were riding their scooters to the campus.
The Jesuit Social Centre opened a new migration desk and the Tokyo Public Law Office inaugurated its Legal Assistance Section for Foreigners.
We are pleased to invite you to subscribe to Ecology and Jesuits in Communication, an e-newsletter of Jesuits and friends, as we respond to the global invitation (GC35 Decree 3) to understand the universal importance of engaging in ecological concerns and the need for reconciliation with creation.
On November 9, Fr Mark Raper spoke at a conference held at the Pontifical Gregorian University to mark 30 years of Jesuit service to refugees. The conference was organised by three Jesuit organisations, Jesuit Refugee Service International, Centro Astalli and Magis as a part of a calendar of events held in Rome between November 9 – 14.